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The First Defeat of Peleliu

The two-and-a-half month battle fought on Peleliu in the fall of 1944 was one of the most vicious engagements of the entire war. Thirteen hundred Marines and more than five hundred Army soldiers were killed in the process of subduing nearly 11,000 Japanese soldiers that were incredibly well-entrenched. But regular readers of Today’s History Lesson probably know all this. Other than Guadalcanal, I think I’ve spent more time discussing Peleliu than any other single battle, so it’s no big secret.

It’s also no secret that, even after nearly 70 years, a pall of controversy hangs over this 13 square miles of coral. And much of the debate stems from the events that happened on this day…March 2, 1944.

As the sun rose on that day, American forces in the Pacific were knocking the Japanese all over the place. Their naval base at Truk was abandoned and in ruins, having been plastered by U.S. carrier aircraft in mid-February. More than 250 aircraft and three dozen ships were destroyed. Admiral Koga packed (what was left of) his bags and retreated to the Palau Islands, setting up a temporary base on Peleliu until a bigger naval base could be completed in the Philippines.

But by the time the sun had set that day, Koga’s plans, to quote Bill Sloan’s outstanding Brotherhood of Heroes, “…went up in smoke – along with 160 more Japanese planes.” He continues, “…scores of Hellcat fighters and Dauntless dive-bombers from the carriers Hornet, Lexington, and Bunker Hill ravaged Peleliu’s airstrip in relentless day-long raids. Low-flying Avenger torpedo planes sowed hundreds of magnetic mines across the entrances to Malakal harbor, trapping some thirty enemy ships inside, then returned to sink or disable all of them.”

Peleliu was a wreck. Whatever offensive punch the island possessed on March 1st was gone. The garrison stationed there was still strong but, like Truk, it no longer posed any long-range threat to General MacArthur’s designs on the Philippines. Even the Japanese knew that was true, and declared the garrison expendable.

But the 1st Marine Division became part of a power struggle between MacArthur, who really considered them to be “his” Marines and wanted to keep them, and Fleet Admiral Nimitz, who wanted them returned to Navy control. And General MacArthur’s passionate appeal to President Roosevelt carried the day, and the Philippines operation, with Peleliu as a flanking maneuver, was on.

So the 1st Marine Division, followed later by the Army’s 81st Infantry Division, would be called upon to expend a lot of blood to capture a postage-stamp-sized piece of real estate that, in all likelihood, wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the Pacific War one iota. A piece of real estate that had been pretty much defeated six months prior to invasion.